6 ms·
My experience with Gobble went as follows: I was going to do their trial but bailed before completing checkout because their terms automatically subscribe you f
by sboak 12y ago
My experience with Gobble went as follows: I was going to do their trial but bailed before completing checkout because their terms automatically subscribe you for weekly meals. I got a call a few days later saying that I was being sent the meals anyway and that, also, they weren't sure which meals I was supposed to be sent so they might be wrong. No offer to refund my money. They said the meals would be arriving the next day. It's now over a week later and I never received the incorrect meals that I never actually ordered but was charged for. I emailed customer service again about this and haven't heard back. Caveat emptor.
- UrMomReadsHN 12y agoBefore completing checkout? So they billed your credit card without permission? That's pretty damn bad... Like maybe credit card fraud bad.
- sboak 12y agoGood point. I didn't really think about how that charge went through without finishing checkout.
- enraged_camel 12y agoI'm not a lawyer, but doesn't fraud imply intent? In this case, it sounds like an accident (caused by a bug). Still serious of course but based on ooshma's post above it has already been addressed.
- UrMomReadsHN 12y agoWhich is why I said maybe. I haven't dove down into fraud statutes too much but I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that when someone takes payment they have a legal obligation to verify the credit card holder actually authorized the payment they collect. At the very least Visa,etc,'s lawyers will care. There are also a whole bunch of other statutes that can apply too.
- timcederman 12y agoI've heard similar billing/delivery weirdness from folks using Gobble.
- ooshma 12y agoOy vey! Weirdness is not good at all. If there's any unresolved issues still, please do have your friend(s) reach out to me at ooshma@gobble.com.
- UrMomReadsHN 12y agoThis isn't weirdness, it is "I charged someone's credit card without their permission."
- timcederman 12y agoI'm pretty sure he's been in touch - basically food started showing up again out of nowhere.
- mech4bg 12y agoI sorted things out yesterday, but one thing I do have to note - every time I have called customer service (which I've had to do a number of times, because emails are never answered), whenever I am promised a callback, it never happens. Same thing again yesterday.
- sergiotapia 12y agoHow can they charge you without actually submitting your checkout form? Issue a chargeback and report them, that's beyond shady.
- Swizec 12y agoI've written bugs like that before. You never think "Do X every week" is going to be difficult to code, but man, when I actually coded that ... a lot of things can go wrong in subtle ways that you don't really consider in advance until a customer clicks something or uses features in a sequence nobody's ever stumbled onto before. As for the credit card thing - easily explained as "Submitted info to Stripe, but not the actual form, backend system got confused" MVP LYFE! Disclaimer: I never worked at Gobble, I don't know if this is what's happening, but I painfully know how this can happen
- UrMomReadsHN 12y ago> don't really consider in advance Someone abandoning the checkout process is absolutely the first thing you should consider in advance.
- Swizec 12y agoEmphasis on should. There's a lot of things you should do, but the truth is that making modern async webapps with a million moving parts is hard.
- protonfish 12y agoI'm sorry but eCommerce isn't rocket science and neither is proper QA.
- Swizec 12y agoWhich is why companies with thousands of employees and a bunch of money launch buggy products to the market every day and scrappy startups shouldn't. Right?
- protonfish 12y agoFor some reason I can't replay to your other comment. Weird. I build modern async web apps for a living and it's not that hard. I ran eCommerce for a medium-size software company (as a part of my duties) for several years. If you find an ecommerce application difficult to maintain, it is probably a result of poor design.
- ooshma 12y agoIt was really great to chat with you on the phone just now. I'm so immensely sorry for the completely botched souffle that was your experience with us pre-launch. We fixed the website bug you encountered immediately, and equally important -- we've just hired two new "Gobble Sous Chefs" (our term for your assistant or customer service) that will start tomorrow and next week to properly handle any and all questions or issues for our community. Being available to our customers is my #1 priority (after helping you make insanely delicious meals), and you won't be encountering any lack of service in the future. Separately, if you ever want to try a few meals on the house, I would be so happy to personally deliver meals for you and say hello.
- lquist 12y agoThis reminds me how important customer service is. I was not entire convinced about Gobble, but willing to try the trial. I saw this comment, and decided against the trial based solely on sboak's experience.